With The Amazing Spider-Man 2 swinging its way towards us, every aspect of the film’s footage releases – including this weekend’s long Super Bowl trailer – is being scrutinized for plot points. Director Marc Webb, it seems, is not above releasing nuggets of his own, dropping word via a Tweet about B.J. Novak’s book that the actor is playing Alistair Smythe.
Almost shot ASM2 in B+W til [@bjnovak](https://twitter.com/bjnovak)'s (A. Smythe) promo for his excellent book ONE MORE THING beat me to it: > > — Marc Webb (@MarcW) [February 3, 2014](https://twitter.com/MarcW/statuses/430457648157171712)
Spider-fans will recognise that name as the son of Spencer Smythe, a thorn in Peter Parker’s side. In both the comics and the animated series, he’s found building robots called the Spider Slayers that are aimed at either capturing or taking out the web-crawler, and working with both J. Jonah Jameson and Norman Osborn. Given that the new film’s viral site carries an interview with Spencer Sr., it’s a fair bet the OsCorp connection will be played up here. How much Alistair will feature (he does, after all, take over the mantle on his father’s death in a similar vein to Harry and Norman), or whether this is layering plot points for future use remains to be seen. But we’d guess the latter, given the development of a Sinister Six film…
Using Smythe directly would raise the possibility of overstuffing the sequel with baddies, given that it already features Jamie Foxx’s Electro, Paul Giamatti as Rhino, Harry (Dane DeHaan) and Norman (Chris Cooper) Osborn and hints at other characters to come. Still, it’s good to see the team building the world.
With Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Colm Feore, Sally Field and Felicity Jones in the cast, The Amazing Spider-Man is out on April 18.